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Facebook

Facebook is an American online social networking and media platform. Facebook is based in Menlo Park, California and was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

Facebook is considered one of the Big Four tech companies along with Amazon, Apple and Google.

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Facebook Origins

Facebook originally was limited the website to just Harvard students, but Columbia, Stanford, and Yale students. Eventually, memberships were expanded to the remaining Ivy League schools, MIT, and higher education institutions in Massachusetts. Gradually Facebook continued to expand and added support for various universities and high schools.

Facebook held its initial public offering in February of 2012. It was valued at $104 billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public company. Facebook makes a large portion of its revenue from advertisements that appear onscreen in various forms.

Facebook and Privacy

Facebook enables users to control access to individual posts and their profile through privacy settings. The user’s name and profile picture are public. The revenue of Facebook depends on targeted advertising. This involves analyzing user data (from the site and the broader internet) to inform the targeting.

These regarding privacy has changed repeatedly over the years, amid a series of controversies covering everything from how well it secures user data, to what extent it allows users to control access, to the kinds of access given to third parties, including businesses, political campaigns governments.

The laws and regulations vary according to the country, as some nations require the company to make data available (and limit access to services), while the European Union’s GDPR regulation requires additional privacy protections.